Summable chains of instantons: Green's functions and the Prasad-Sommerfield limit

Abstract
We construct, for each homotopy class, a type of instanton configuration which exhibits many special, simple properties. The basic reason behind such properties is indicated by deriving our configuration in the 't Hooft gauge, starting from a class of particularly simple, static, and self-dual solutions in de Sitter space. Apart from this we consider, in this paper, mostly results for flat Euclidean space. We show that the static solutions are equivalent to multiply charged instantons at the origin in Witten's sense. Green's functions for this class of instanton background are studied. The known flat-space results of Brown et al. are shown to be reducible, for our case, to totally explicit and relatively compact forms. The sums over different indices arising in their formalism are performed. The inversion of a matrix, necessary for the isospin-1 massless scalar field, is carried out explicitly, for our configuration, for arbitrary index of the background instanton field. Green's functions for the Prasad-Sommerfield case are obtained as limits of our results directly in summed-up forms. Green's functions are studied also in de Sitter space. Special features due to periodic time are pointed out.